No Wikileaks, but cocoa piece typifies fight over leaks

WikiLeaks’
publication of tens of thousands of pages of confidential U.S. military documents on the Afghanistan war has
drawn a lot of attention, perhaps overshadowing the many, more common cases
around the world in which journalists publish stories based on leaked documents.
This week, for instance, three journalists in Ivory Coast were found
guilty of disclosing
confidential
judicial information after they published a story that shook the political
establishment in this West African nation.

We're
not talking here about the kind of military action reports published by
WikiLeaks. The Ivory Coast case centered on a newspaper’s disclosure of a 137-page prosecutor’s report
that detailed alleged corruption in the cocoa industry, a key economic
sector in this nation, the world’s top exporter of cocoa. For nearly two weeks,
the courtroom drama gripped the nation, stirred a debate on freedom of the
press, and spotlighted three audacious editors of a fledgling newspaper called Le Nouveau Courrier. “The coffee and
cocoa issue is very sensitive in our country. Few journalists dare to touch it,”
said Le Nouveau CourrierEditor-in-Chief Saint-Claver
Oula. Little wonder. Guy-André
Kieffer, a Franco-Canadian journalist, went missing more than six
years ago while investigating corruption in the cocoa industry.

In
2007, Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo ordered an official inquiry into graft
in the cocoa industry. State Prosecutor Raymound Tchimou, who oversaw the
inquiry, handed his report to Gbagbo in June, a step heralded by Ivorian state
television. But the report itself was held back from the public, and Tchimou
was reticent on the details. “It seemed a bit odd and it drew our curiosity,” Oula
said. After the newspaper got a copy of the report from an unnamed source, it published
an in-depth
piece on July 13 that described the prosecutor’s findings of embezzlement, over-billing
and malfeasance. (Although two dozen people have been imprisoned during the course
of the cocoa probe, no cases have been brought to trial as yet.)

Tchimou
immediately summoned Oula,
along with Le Nouveau
CourrierManaging
Editor Stéphane Guédé and News Editor Théophile Kouamouo, and
demanded they reveal their sources or be thrown into prison for “theft” of
official documents. When the trio refused, the prosecutor jailed them and dispatched
police to raid the offices of Le Nouveau
Courrier. Police came to the newsroom without a search warrant, but carted
away Oula’s laptop.

The arrests
and raid, in a country where press offenses were made civil matters under 2004 law,
stirred unprecedented solidarity among Ivorian journalists. A loosely formed Ivorian
Committee for the Protection of Journalists emerged. Last Friday,
the group staged a sit-in at the gates of the main courthouse in Abidjan to protest
the imprisonment of their colleagues. The gathering was dispersed
by police—but not peacefully, according to local news reports.

Ivorian
photojournalist Stéphane Goué, a group leader, told CPJ that club-wielding police
officers assaulted
at least 10 journalists. Police seized the cellphone of journalist Simon Konan of Le Flambeau, and deleted images taken by
photojournalists such as Olga Ottro of Le Nouveau Réveil and Koussi
Germain of Nord Sud, he said. At least
three journalists were injured, including Germain and reporter Sanou Amadou of Nord Sud. Saturday’s edition of daily Nord Sud featured a front page
photo of Germain with a bandaged arm and head. Undeterred, leaders
of the journalists group planned to ramp up protests if the three Le Nouveau Courrier editors were not freed.

On Monday, came the much anticipated denouement: A
judge acquitted the Le Nouveau Courrier journalists of
the more serious penal code charges of theft and disclosure of
administrative documents. The three were found guilty of disclosing confidential judicial
information, a lesser offense covered under the 2004 press law. The
judge fined the paper 5 million CFA francs (US$9,800) and ordered it not to
publish for 15 days.

These are the types of “leaked
document” cases that CPJ monitors regularly in Africa and around the world.
They typically involve issues of great local importance; the journalists who
publish these stories are often jailed for days or weeks at a time. In many of these
cases, government officials vaguely cite national security as the reason for their
secrecy and the justification for their repression. But local journalists say narrow
political interests typically motivate these prosecutions.

WikiLeaks’ publication of the Afghan documents is a
world away in most respects. But there may be one parallel. After punishing the
press, Ivorian prosecutor Tchimou eventually turned his attention to his own office,
charging his spokesman, Patrice Pohé, with leaking the document. Pohé was acquitted, but the development
underscored an important point for Ivorian journalists: The press has a duty to
uncover what is hidden, while the government is responsible for addressing its
own leaks.

On
Monday in Washington, a reporter asked
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs what the WikiLeaks’
disclosure “says about the ability of the [U.S.]
government to protect confidential information if a breach like this can
occur?” Gibb’s response? “Well, I think there is no doubt that this is a
concerning development in operational security.”

Mohamed Keita is advocacy coordinator for CPJ's Africa Program. Keita has written about independent journalism and development in sub-Saharan Africa for publications including The New York Times and Africa Review, and has appeared on NPR, the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and Radio France Internationale. Keita has also given presentations on press freedom at the World Bank, U.S. State Department, and universities. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ.

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